Excitement, protests on MSU campus as Obama arrives to sign farm bill

10:27 PM, February 7, 2014

President Barack Obama signs the Agriculture Act of 2014 into law on on Friday Feb. 7, 2014, at the Mary Anne McPhail Equine Performance Center in East Lansing. The president visited the facility at Michigan State University to see what institutions are doing to create jobs and innovations that benefit farmers and rural communities. / Ryan Garza/Detroit Free Press

Related Links

EAST LANSING — President Barack Obama wants to see a turnaround plan for Detroit from Mayor Mike Duggan within 90 days.

“I’ve got some work to do,” Duggan told reporters after a lunch of salmon and rice with Obamaat the Michigan Biotechnology Institute at Michigan State University before Obama signed a $500 billion farm bill.

“I laid out some very specific economic strategies,” and “he was very interested,” Duggan said. “He asked me to flesh out some details.”

There were no requests for or promises of money for the beleagured city, which is going through the largest municipal bankruptcy in history and is being operated by state-appointed emergency manager Kevyn Orr. Instead, Duggan said he talked strategies with Obama on how to create more jobs in the city, and reiterated the need for some federal help for more buses in the city to help get people to jobs.

The White House issued a statement that said Obama “reiterated his administration’s long-term commitment to partnering with the mayor and local leaders to support the economic revitalization of Detroit, so that this iconic American city remains strong and vibrant.”

And Obama told the crowd at the Mary Anne McPhail Equine Performance Center on MSU’s campus that “if there’s one thing he (Duggan) wants you to know, it’s that Detroit is open for business, and I have great confidence that he’s going to provide the leadership that we need.”

During Obama’s speech, he recalled the difficult years early in his presidency when the U.S. auto industry was grappling with bankruptcy and many Americans struggled to stay afloat.

“I love coming to Michigan,” he said. “There are few places in the country that better symbolize what we’ve been through in the last few years.”

The main event, though, was the farm bill — a document that is about so much more than farming, Obama said: The bill is also about jobs, conservation, innovation and research, energy, even healthy eating, he told a crowd of about 500 people at MSU.

“It’s like a swiss army knife,” Obama said. “It multitasks.”

Ken Nobis, president of the Michigan Milk Producers Association, said his group has been working to change dairy policy since 2009, and he credited Democractic U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow with making that change a reality through the farm bill.

Under prior law, “there was no effective safety net,” Nobis said.

The farm bill pulls back on direct payments to growers and extends crop insurance to farmers who raise specialty crops like apples, cherries and many other farm-to-table fruits and vegetables grown in Michigan. It also offers new insurance to the state’s 1,900 dairy farmers. Bipartisan majorities ended up supporting the legislation in both the U.S. House and Senate.

Ben LaCross, a fruit farmer from the northern Michigan town of Cedar, introduced Obama and noted that until this farm bill, he had no protections for his apple and cherry orchards — especially during the disasastrous 2012 growing season, when an unusually warm spring and subsequent frost destroyed most of Michigan’s fruit production. The new farm bill provides crop insurance for specialty crops like LaCross grows.

“I can’t think of a more appropriate venue to sign the farm bill than MSU, our nation’s original land grant university,” he said.

The visit to MSU was symbolic in many ways. MSU started as Michigan Agricultural College in 1857, the nation’s first college dedicated to agricultural studies. It continues in the tradition with a premier veterinary school and crop management programs.

According to MSU, Michigan’s food and agriculture industries produce $91.4 billion in economic activity a year and is second only to California in terms of the diversity of crops grown.

It’s also the alma mater of U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, who as chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee shepherded the farm bill through Congress.

“I’m proud of this farm bill,” she said. “It focuses on the future, not the past.”

Kevin Thatcher and his family first saw President Barack Obama when he ran for President in 2008.

He supported him then and still does.

“He kind of inspires me,” said Thatcher, who owns Thatch Computer Consulting in Okemos. “I like his policies and the way he’s tried to unite the country.”

He acknowledges that things like Obamacare aren’t perfect and that he’s wary of the food stamp cuts contained in the farm bill.

“But things with Obamacare are improving, and any plan is better than no plan at all,” added Thatcher, who came to MSU’s campus with his wife Lynne, son Shane and daughter Cassie.

While the bill makes cuts to food stamps for struggling Americans, Obama said he wouldn’t have signed it if there weren’t protections for vulnerable citizens.

“By giving Americans more bang for their buck at places like farmers’ markets, we’re making it easier for working families to eat healthy foods,” he said. “A lot of folks go through tough times in their lives, that doesn’t mean they should go hungry. Not in a country like America.”

Gov. Rick Snyder was invited to attend the event but had a previous committment in Detroit.

“The president’s visit is a well-deserved recognition of Michigan’s dynamic, cutting-edge food and agriculture industry,” he said in a statement. “The president’s decision to sign this vital, bipartisan legislation at Michigan State University underscores our state’s importance on the global agricultural stage.”

State Rep. Sam Singh, D-East Lansing, said it was particularly fitting for Obama to sign the bill at MSU.

“He came here when he was running for president and it’s a great honor to have him back here as president,” he said. “Agriculture and immigration reform play such a big part in the economic futures of our country.”

While farmers, elected leaders and politicians cheered the president inside the Equine Performance Center, several groups braved single-digit temperatures to protest everything from the Affordable Care Act to stubbornly high unemployment.

A cadre of stalwart MSU College Republicans gutted it out. They carried signs decrying the Affordable Care Act as bad for the economy.

“Obamacare is going to cost us so much money, and no one is going to be able to pay for it,” said Abby Bell, a political science major from Sault Ste. Marie. “The people who are already on insurance have to get off their plan and go into this plan. A lot of people have had not very good experiences with it.”

For those inside, however, the farm bill signing was one of the best signs of bipartisan cooperation seen in Washington in quite some time.

“This was clearly a bipartisan effort,” said U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, even though no Republicans showed up for the event. “This is a celebration of what happens when people work together.”

Obama didn’t come to MSU without playing to the crowd. He gave shout-outs to MSU basketball and football coaches Tom Izzo and Mark D’Antonio.

And he couldn’t come to campus without the obligatory “Go Green,” before he started his speech. The crowd obliged, shouting back: “Go white.”